“Without Mommie Dearest, Joan would still have fans, but it generates new fans every year. They want to come see home movies too,” he says. “When I do public events, I usually expect the age group to swing a little older, but there are people in their late teens and 20s coming to the film screenings and presentations. While many bemoan that Christina’s story tarnished Joan’s legacy, Casey insists there’s a silver lining. That same year, Christina turned Mommie Dearest into a musical that premiered off-Broadway. “Because the parenting situation is different towards them, and that’s a divide- and-conquer type of situation.” “Different people in the family experience the parenting situation in different ways,” Christina told The Guardian in 2019.

She shrugs off her younger sisters’ radically different view of Joan. The disinherited siblings contested Joan’s will and were awarded $27,500 each.Ĭhristina did not respond to Closer‘s request for an interview, but has always stood by her version of her childhood. Unlike Cathy and Cindy, he backed up Mommie Dearest’s tales of child abuse. Your Guide to 101 Classic TV Shows of the 1970sĬhristopher, who died in 2006, also had a difficult relationship with his mother. “I don’t think it was such a terrible punishment.” I had to go to bed without dinner,” recalled Cathy. While there is much speculation as to the truth of her. I didn’t have to eat it, but I didn’t get something else. The 1981 movie, Mommie Dearest, which is based on the autobiography of Joan Crawford, was written by her daughter, Christina Crawford. “, I said I didn’t like my dinner and I didn’t want to eat it. But Cathy and her sister never experienced anything like the beatings and bizarre punishments described in Christina’s book.

The children had to make their own beds and keep their rooms neat. It’s true that as a parent, Joan, who overcame a penniless childhood to become one of the highest-earning women of Hollywood’s Golden Age, believed in discipline.

“But whenever they were home, they visited her on the set.” “With no male provider in the house, Joan had to work constantly,” explains Casey. To help raise them, she employed a governess, and the children attended boarding school when they were old enough. She adopted Christina in 1940, Christopher in 1942 and the twins in 1947. So the actress spent much of her adult life as a single mother.

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